SW News: Persecution watchdog ADF International has signed a letter sent to the Biden Administration urging intervention to alleviate the discrimination faced by religious minorities in Vietnam. It was signed by more than 70 other international religious organizations and esteemed academics.

The letter which details the persecution of Christians and other minorities in the communist state was handed over to Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other authorities earlier this week. "Over the past twelve months, we have observed the rapid escalation of repressive measures against religious groups that resist government control," the organizations and experts write in the letter.

The government's escalating efforts to intimidate Christians into denying their faith, its crackdown on house churches that refuse to submit to its authority, and its coercive tactics against its members are of special concern.

The letter was sent to Marc Knapper, US Ambassador to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam; Rashad Hussain, Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Antony Blinken, and the Department of State. It was also addressed to Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom, Rashad Hussain.

In the letter, numerous incidents of wrongful criminal prosecutions, arbitrary detentions, and other severe government harassment of religious minorities in Vietnam, particularly Christians, over the previous year are brought up.

A Ga, the former pastor of the Montagnard Evangelical Church of Christ in Vietnam, was one of those Vietnamese nationals who were the focus of "transnational repression" in several of these cases. After Pastor A Ga was jailed and subjected to torture because of his work, ADF International fought for his release from a Vietnamese prison. In November 2022, Vietnam was added to the US state department’s “Special Watch List” for violations of religious freedom.

The letter also demands that the Vietnamese government modify laws that are abused against religious minorities and requests for the release of several religious prisoners of conscience held in that country. Hundreds of Vietnamese refugees who fled Vietnam signed the letter, which was organized by the Vietnamese-American advocacy group Boat People SOS and was signed by 70 international religious freedom organizations and experts, including former US Commission on International Religious Freedom Chair Katrina Lantos-Swett and Ambassador at Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback.